Apple dumps Intel and shows Final Cut Pro on new Mac with Apple CPU !
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JAMedia
Well-known member
All Flash memory has s many write/erase cycles and will wear out eventually. Most decent SD/SF cards and SSd's use wear-leveling to even out the usage of the sectors. Over the last 20 years the cycles and life of the memory has improved a lot but, eventually, it will wear out.
Thomas Smet
Veteran
Most of us have moved way beyond Apples claims and are listening to the dozens if not hundreds of 3rd party reviewers that have noticed insane levels of performance. Apple was kind of right on the money with their claims depending on the app of course. Rosetta will be slower and use more power without a doubt but we are already seeing most of the big production apps starting to support M1 and it will get even better in a month or two as Adobe locks down support for M1. As it stands right now I have two apps that currently don't support M1. Sketch and Android Studio. Well that was as of a few days ago. Sketch already released M1 support and Android Studio works great under Rosetta minus the app emulators which will be fixed soon. I don't think Rosetta is going to be all that much at all in a few months except for a few smaller indie apps, some web development tools and of course games which are notoriously greedy about spending the resources to support other platforms. If a game doesn't sell much anymore few companies are going to bother supporting it.
Thomas Smet
Veteran
While there is a concern of wearing out the flash storage using it as a swap file the OS writes hundreds of small files to the storage all the time. These things have a ton of read/write cycles as well and even using it for a swap file I doubt there is a huge risk. Intel Macs have had 8 GB Ram for years and without a doubt swap files were being used and I don't recall a lot of MBA, Mac mini and 13" MBP users complaining about their storage wearing out.
It will happen eventually but I think by the time it does those Macs will be more than ready for a new upgrade.
Thats kind of the beauty of buying a $699 Mini or a $999 MBA vs a $3k 16" MBP or iMac. Doesn't really hurt as much to keep updating every 3 or 4 years and allows to keep getting better performance every couple of years. In 3 years when the Apple extended warranty is over a new MBA or Mini will likely be faster than a 3 year old 16" MBP so having that more expensive model with the hopes of using it for 6-8 years may not be all that practical anyway.
It will happen eventually but I think by the time it does those Macs will be more than ready for a new upgrade.
Thats kind of the beauty of buying a $699 Mini or a $999 MBA vs a $3k 16" MBP or iMac. Doesn't really hurt as much to keep updating every 3 or 4 years and allows to keep getting better performance every couple of years. In 3 years when the Apple extended warranty is over a new MBA or Mini will likely be faster than a 3 year old 16" MBP so having that more expensive model with the hopes of using it for 6-8 years may not be all that practical anyway.
Apple wants to control both the hardware and the software sides. That's obvious. The long term question is its pricing and commission structure for the third party developers because Apple can present exorbitant demands without running afoul of the anti-trust division. And, if someone is locked into its OS, then that will come out of his pocket.
Of course, Apple could be reasonable. But it hasn't shown itself to always be such.
Now, it will see competition from Microsoft (Windows on ARM or however it will end up calling its ARM geared OS) and Google (probably named Fuchsia). M-soft portables will probably use Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, Chromebooks MediaTek's. Both CPU lines will step up production in 2021.
Of course, Apple could be reasonable. But it hasn't shown itself to always be such.
Now, it will see competition from Microsoft (Windows on ARM or however it will end up calling its ARM geared OS) and Google (probably named Fuchsia). M-soft portables will probably use Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips, Chromebooks MediaTek's. Both CPU lines will step up production in 2021.
That's putting it mildly. It's also one of the reasons I'm not a fan. The overpriced hardware is another. The M1 machines actually being reasonably priced is a pleasant surprise.
Microsoft maybe, since Microsoft has been making intermittent noises about reducing its x86 dependency. The rest I doubt, because of the software that's available for them, and because of the fact that most of them aren't exactly stellar examples of ARM performance.
That latter could change of course, but it depends on whether they choose to focus on cheap or decide to raise their bar.
Unless nVidia's ARM acquisition gets blocked which is still possible AFAIK, nVidia is the most likely candidate for introducing a monster ARM contender because it has the resources to do it, and no risk of losing an existing market in the process. On top of that, nVidia has no CPU+GPU option currently, so it's using AMD CPUs for its A100 beast, and I'm sure one of its goals is to replace that AMD EPYC with a CPU of its own design.
AMD introducing monster no-holds-barred ARM is also a possibility... since AMD has been scoring a lot of HPC contracts where x86 compatibility is completely irrelevant, and those contracts are lucrative. Of course, building on an existing core is more efficient and timely, which is probably the main reason that x86 remains front and center on AMD's HPC contracts.
Run&Gun
Veteran
The Walled Garden certainly has its drawbacks, but it is also the reason that Apple stuff 'just works', at least so much better than the most others.
Meh. Tegra only has one customer for a reason. And that one reason isn't even a big seller, plus I'm fairly certain that between the XBox Series X and PlayStation 5 that nVidia's gaming consoles will be steamrolled.
The fact that Tegra is so... well, meh... is probably why nVidia wants to own ARM. nVidia probably wants to be able to make CPUs that someone might actually want to buy.
Meh. Tegra only has one customer for a reason. And that one reason isn't even a big seller, plus I'm fairly certain that between the XBox Series X and PlayStation 5 that nVidia's gaming consoles will be steamrolled.
The fact that Tegra is so... well, meh... is probably why nVidia wants to own ARM. nVidia probably wants to be able to make CPUs that someone might actually want to buy.
There are 3 tiers of players in technology business.
nVidia doesn't want to sell just the products, they want to make standards and offer solutions.
Tegra isn't CPU:
Where did I heard something like that lately? Ah, yeah, M1. Another Apple "invention".
Latest generation Orin integrates 12 x Arm64 Hercules CPUs with 2 x Ampere iGPU.
Then you can choose how many do you need for specific application and combine with number of required dGPUs.
Which can be scaled to data centers.
Still "meh"?
That strategy will Apple use on higher end "pro" systems, if they decide not to go in full cloud mode (and use it for their data centers).
Yeah, very few of Apple's "inventions" are Apple's own.
If it doesn't make its way into any more systems than the Tegra has so far... then, yeah. nVidia does seem to be getting serious about ARM in the datacenter though, so maybe they'll pull the stops out and make a serious SOC finally.
Maybe seeing Apple's success with M1 will entice nVidia into building a beastly ARM SOC. We do know that nVidia doesn't care how much power it consumes; even though Ampere is more efficient than Turing, instead of prioritizing small and light models, it just put the pedal to the metal.
Maybe. We'll see... Apple does have a long history of overpromising and underdelivering in a big way, and the M1 is the first time it's actually delivered. Yet apparently old habits die hard and Apple had to make ridiculously hyperbolic claims about it yet again. Sigh...
The cheap bar will be raised. Or something like that.
Granted, this may not be up to pro tricks but the next generation of the sub-$700 portables should be both faster and energy efficient at the same time. The key will be coordinating the software apps with the OS. And, if you're a third party developer, where do you put down your roots? Apple is the first medium range ARM portable, so you haul your assets that way. Microsoft is supposed to be issuing an OS without the compilers sometime early 2021. Google just can't afford to lag too far behind.
PS. The Media Tek is using the latest Cortex chip. It ought to be good enough but it won't be in mass production until the second half of 2021. Fuchsia better be ready by then.
combatentropy
Veteran
Chrome OS already runs on ARM. Why must Fuchsia be ready by then? I know about the experimental OS, but I haven't heard yet exactly why Google's doing it.
If they want to enter a higher end portables or desktop market, they need a different operating system than the one on smartphones. Apple is going to do likewise. The key is going to be the race for the vertical integration between the more and less powerful, but more efficient, units. Basically, the entire PC market is at stake here.
combatentropy
Veteran
https://www.aboutchromebooks.com/ne...-wish-for-chromebooks-with-google-made-chips/
I'll refer to an article from someone more qualified on the topic than I.
I'll refer to an article from someone more qualified on the topic than I.
combatentropy
Veteran
Right, that article is asking for Google to keep Chrome OS and undergird it with stronger ARM processors. That makes sense.
The PC market has been following the camera market, frankly. For the most part, it's been held up by the gaming industry, which is about to get turned on its head when the newest gaming consoles promise (and appear to deliver) 4K gaming.
I wrote elsewhere that even if the Big Navi fell flat on its face, AMD would still win because of those consoles, since both consoles are based on custom AMD APUs with ray tracing accelerator hardware built in. Realtime 4K makes a $3000 PC kind of redundant in the face of a $600 console.
Redundant for gaming.
Thomas Smet
Veteran
I'm kind of looking forward to where Apple goes wit this for gaming. Sure right now people can laugh that it only beats the 560X and 1050 and falls just short of the 5300m and 1650 dedicated GPUs but this is Apple go at a Arm computer GPU and its integrated and already beating GPUs used in PC gaming laptops today.
All with using much less power meaning cool, quiet and long battery play time.
Even if Apple only doubles the GPU cores for the 16" it very likely will beat the 5600m and 2060 GPUs putting it very well into high end gaming territory for a laptop. Again all with using very little power and running cool and quiet. Since the 16" uses a larger battery it could have insane battery life.
I'm finding it harder to get excited about PC laptops now with their massive size and power consumption and short battery life. I think this is the future for gaming and game developers would be stupid to not port games to the M1 right now. Its only going to get better and users are going to be attracted to a portable computer they can game on that gets long battery life and is cool and quiet.
Also previously if anyone wanted any chance to game on a Mac they needed at least a 16" MBP or a iMac. That now is no longer true and the M1 laptops match entry level PC gaming laptops in terms of cost and beat performance in some cases. Yes there are still some dirt cheap laptops out there with the 2060 but they are hogs and not very good machines. You get what you pay for and while the performance may be there they are rather crappy build quality and may not have a great lifespan.
I really look forward to seeing where Apple can take this and having desktop and 2080 GPU performance on a portable, cool and quiet laptop. Its closer than we think and when that happens I'm not sure I will ever want to go back to a big bulky computer with a 1200 watt power supply.
All with using much less power meaning cool, quiet and long battery play time.
Even if Apple only doubles the GPU cores for the 16" it very likely will beat the 5600m and 2060 GPUs putting it very well into high end gaming territory for a laptop. Again all with using very little power and running cool and quiet. Since the 16" uses a larger battery it could have insane battery life.
I'm finding it harder to get excited about PC laptops now with their massive size and power consumption and short battery life. I think this is the future for gaming and game developers would be stupid to not port games to the M1 right now. Its only going to get better and users are going to be attracted to a portable computer they can game on that gets long battery life and is cool and quiet.
Also previously if anyone wanted any chance to game on a Mac they needed at least a 16" MBP or a iMac. That now is no longer true and the M1 laptops match entry level PC gaming laptops in terms of cost and beat performance in some cases. Yes there are still some dirt cheap laptops out there with the 2060 but they are hogs and not very good machines. You get what you pay for and while the performance may be there they are rather crappy build quality and may not have a great lifespan.
I really look forward to seeing where Apple can take this and having desktop and 2080 GPU performance on a portable, cool and quiet laptop. Its closer than we think and when that happens I'm not sure I will ever want to go back to a big bulky computer with a 1200 watt power supply.